Saturday, December 13, 2014

Sen. Elizabeth Warren's Electrifying Anti-Citibank Speech

I love Elizabeth Warren, and haven't been shy about saying so. Since the first time I saw her--probably on Real Time with Bill Maher some years ago--I was smitten. I was thrilled when I heard she was running for Senate, and even happier when she beat Scott Brown (and hell, I'm gay, and he's a looker*). I'm an unapologetic Warrenite.

So, naturally, I knew I'd get around to watching her speech before the Senate about the fairly stupid, greedy amendment shoved into the federal spending bill, which was effectively written by Citibank. The amendment returns the burden of a potential bailout of the banks to taxpayers, should they once again gamble with our money and lose it. And they will, particularly when you realize that the Republican Congress loves to deregulate, and hates any restriction on big business. And Democrats can be as bad sometimes.

That's why I love Warren. She may be a Democrat, but she is dedicated to consumers and citizens, not to corporations, and she doesn't appear to have been corrupted (please don't fall under their spell, Lizzie!). She is unafraid to call out Citi, and is heedless of the fact that other Democrats are not on board with her. She's blazing a trail, and she's making some waves. So, I queued up the video, and noticed it was almost 10 minutes long. I figured I'd watch a little, maybe skip ahead. . .but I watched it all, and it went down easy. She's tremendous. Watch for yourself.

And I'll say this: if Right Wing World can only throw slurs like "Fauxcahontas" at her, over her claim that she has some Native American ancestry? I've got to wonder what in the world they're smoking, and point out, they've got nothing. And they've got no one like Elizabeth Warren.

[NOTE: This clip is from Hardball. The un-embeddable stand-alone clip is available at the link below.]As promised, Elizabeth Warren has left blood and teeth on the floor.
During the final debate over the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau, before Warren was a senator, she was asked about an attempt to defang the unborn agency. "My first choice is a strong consumer agency. My second choice is no agency at all and plenty of blood and teeth left on the floor,” she said at the time, comments that were unsuccessfully used against her in her subsequent campaign. . .